Tyler Kepner Tweets: With Friends Like These...

Kepner's article on the End of the Aura sends the wrong message and unnecessarily disses Joba.   It got my old pal Lyn Lary really pissed. Lyn also proved to be right about tonight's game:

Kepner tells us that Joba Chamberlain’s torn ligament is due to that 2007 midges game in Cleveland that “punctured his aura.”
This is the sort of analysis that must make major-leaguers want to puncture some part of sportswriters. Kepner goes on to blame Joba himself for the fact that the umpires let him be devoured by insects, contrasting his “unraveling” with the noble Fausto Carmona, who remained “focused, undisturbed by the swarm.”
Right. 2007 was the great Fausto’s one and only acceptable year in the major leagues to date. Every other season, from his 2006 1-10 mark to his present, scintillating 3-7, 5.33, he’s been beaten like a rented donkey, while Joba, for all his disappointments, has compiled a decent career and has a ring to show for it.
Kepner’s too stupid to even realize that he’s undercutting his own argument. If 2007 was all about aura, and aura is all about pitching, then how come Fausto has pitched like Helen of Troy ever since?
And while I’ve never been so unfortunate as to snap a ligament, I somehow doubt that it has anything to do with a besmirched aura.
But then, why should Kepner let anything get in the way of a good metaphor? This is, after all, the same guy who wrote a book called, “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty.” After the 2001 World Series. One world championship, two pennants, six division titles, and eight playoff appearances later, we can only marvel at his prescience. I’m going to the game tonight. I’ll look for Fausto’s aura and try to see how it’s doing when he’s walking to the showers.